blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

John Henry Cardinal Newman The Catholic Church is probably the only religion which raises reason together with faith as a standard for thinking and with it, life. And just for that as a way to praising the Divine, she invented the university, made sure this flourished to the present day, nurtured the arts and gave birth to science, the social sciences and modern mathematics. The Church has always had a space for thinkers and that space sometimes was the Papal throne or at least the seat of the local diocese. Two of the recent popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI are major contributors to philosophy and theology and in J ohn Paul II, even environmental ethics . Benedict is known to follow developments in science. Traditionally, the Catholic universities are the spaces for thinking with or even against the Church. Ah yes! The University, the alma mater studiorum as the University in Bologna, the world's oldest in existence has for its motto. The University is semper liberi...

The Geography of the Internet (from Wikipedia Commons) This year the cyberworld marked the 100th birthday of Alan Turing, whose formalization of the algorithm for computable numbers made possible the machine that bears his name. This provided the basis for how computers work and eventually how the Internet operates. This year too computer scientists marked the lamentable suicide of Turing after he was prosecuted as being gay, in a time when homosexuality was a criminal offence. This post is not about gay rights but another right just as important, the right to free expression and speech in whatever the environment and locale. Freedom of expression is a universal human right as declared by the United Nations and is "beyond frontiers". What then is this frontier? The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights was made in 1948 just when Turing's machines were just being applied to military and civilian use . Now the world is vastly different, with information being ...

Martial Law babies... The word I first heard from uncles and aunts who called those born near and about Sept 21, 1972 or where born a two or three years earlier but at that date had not lost the innocence of babyhood. I am a martial law baby. I was four when Mr Marcos through Secretary Tatad read Presidential Proclamation 1081, placing the whole Philippines under martial law. Mr Marcos wanted to radically restructure the body politic, shutting Congress, arresting his political opponents and gagging once Asia’s “most free wheeling press”. Nonetheless, the early gains were remarkable. There was a decrease in crime rate, new infrastructure made, orderly traffic and disciplined pedestrians. My older cousins who were teens then, had to stay at home after 12:00 AM as there was a curfew till 4:00 AM. This was to the delight of my uncles and aunts. Their sleepless nights were over, at least with regards to teenagers. I was child then. I thought that “curfew” pronounced in Philippine English ...

I have been following the debate on the Catholic identity of the Ateneo de Manila University and I immediately recalled my English lit class in "Godless" University of the Philippines where we had to read selections from John Henry Newman's "The Idea of a University". Our devout Methodist professor required us to really understand it. Newman is considered as one of the sylists of apologetic literature and the Essay in English. All the quotes in this post were cut and pasted from Newman's essay. Now that I have made the attribution, I wish to be absolved of the sin of plagiarism! The Oxford don and Anglican priest, John Henry Newman  is the most famous of Anglican "returnees" to the Roman Church. He is also one of the greatest theologians in 19th Century England.  As a consequence of becoming a Roman Catholic he had to leave Oxford. For those of my friends who are associated with the University of the Philippines, this is like being banished fro...

I concede.. It is not LIKE  the Galileo affair of the 1600s but it is notable since this is beginning to look like the first major Church vs. secularism tiff in almost 60 years in PH. And like the Galileo affair this present one involves Jesuits and Roman bishops in high and low places, or better yet in all SORTS of PLACES! Jesuits always find themselves in the darndest places! And like the Inquisition's missing out of the truth of Eppur si Muove , the Roman bishops fall into the same old trap! I am referring to Jesuit padre, renowned atmospheric scientist and Ateneo de Manila's President Fr Jett Villarin and his official statement adhering to official Church teaching and how it situates Ateneo's professors who don't agree with the Church on the issue King's  Great Matter. Prof Randy David comments most interestingly on the issue not by rehashing and flogging the anti vs pro RH debate but by commenting on academic freedom in a Catholic affiliated university. ...

My lectures to undergraduates on academic freedom is within the subject of the history of science in relation to the history of the Roman Church.  The thesis is that the this freedom is at the root for the esse or being of the university. The concept of academic freedom was first formalized in German medieval universities but essentially was practiced in all of Europe's ancient universities, Bologna, Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, Palencia, Heidelberg etc The Roman Catholic Church in fact founded all of these universities and the liberties granted by the secular powers and the Church were respected. Some of the universities like Oxford and Cambridge passed into Protestant hands in the Reformation but still they held on to these liberties. Thus with academic freedom which extends to professors and their students (with their inherent rights), science and the arts flourished. Without these freedoms, the freedom of research would have been curtailed. As paradoxically it sounds to 21st s...

Alright, the Philippines is a secular state as defined in its constitution. How can it have an established religion which Wikipedia defines as "a church which is an organ of the state"? However I would argue sociologically that the Catholic Church is an organ of the Philippine state. After all, you have a senator who recently famously said "my foot" on the floor, smooching the Cardinal's ring in his palace when she launched her bid for the presidency against the Protestant Fidel Ramos. Ramos won the vote. That my dear friends is so Canossian, and I am not referring to the socially involved order of nuns but to what Henry IV of the Germans got when he was excommunicated by the Pope! Excommunication was recently first bandied around by one Catholic bishop on the President. Excommunication is a serious business and the Pope today never says the "E" word since we are in an ecumenical age. The Pope as much as possible won't excommunicate unless by...

Rep Mong Palatino folded up as expected, withdrew his "religious neutrality bill" (I don't call it the "Ban God bill" since banning God is just like banning sex.. It just won't hold water). He apologised. I agree that he had nothing to apologise for especially for offending religious sensibilities (fanatics do that all the time..  ho humm). He should apologise to the public for his stupidity. This as expected given our own group of Freethinkers a dose of reality about Pinoy society. The fact is Pinoy society is visual and it needs images. Politicians know this and so put "Epal" everywhere. Also Pinoy society is basically theist and so there isn't really space for the secular. But I have blogged about this. Let me go to the idea of religious neutrality. The courts and our Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights hold freedom of worship as a fundamental human right. The Philippine Supreme Court has ruled that this right is s...

Christmas party pooper Raymond Palatino seeks to ban this religious symbol in UP's Lantern Parade! The Honourable Raymond Palatino, Member of the Philippine Congress wants religious symbols out of public view especially in government offices and agencies. This is a copycat move and foreign import from the secular West, especially Europe. As a foreign import, it is totally alien to Filipino culture , Christian, Lumad, Muslim etc and MUST BE OPPOSED . Filipinos are a nation of people with a faith tradition who support the separation of Church and State. Why? It is because they believe the separation of Church and State protects their freedoms, most especially of worship. This freedom of worship guarantees religious pluralism and the tolerance of most Filipinos to the diversity of beliefs. The Filipino as a Roman Catholic bishop once said, is "most ecumenical". An good friend of mine, an American Episcopal priest who has spent his whole priestly life in missions i...

The ongoing territorial claims spat between China and the Philippines is historically significant since for the first time in millennia, China gets a firm "no way" from what it has traditionally considered as vassal states. This is what the social and "classical" media have missed out in their analysis is in the Scarborough shoal standoff. China has had threatening territorial problems from its eastern and northeastern neighbours but not from the south. Only Korea can be considered as a vassal state here. Japan has been the traditional nemesis and the Mongols have conquered China in the last 1000 years. Beijing is the clear loser and has more to lose than what some op ed columnists opine . Why do I say this? And it was completely unprepared for dealing with a Tsinoy President, Noynoy Co Juang Co Aquino! First of all it is economic. Traditionally Beijing has used its economic clout to "teach" ASEAN countries not to diss it out. But these ASEAN nation...

The Philippine Navy deployed its fastest and most modern warship the BRP Gregorio del Pilar to interdict Chinese boats allegedly illegally fishing on Scarborough Shoals which is within Philippine territory. Sailors from the warship boarded one of the boats and found a catch of endangered giant clams and sharks. However Chinese civilian surveillance ships prevented the del Pilar to apprehend the Chinese resulting in a tense standoff . China claims the shoal as part of its territory. As of this writing the warship was ordered withdrawn by the naval command and replaced by a civilian coast guard cutter. This proves that the Philippines can project its naval power as a blue water navy even with limited assets. President Noynoy Aquino has put much priority in upgrading the naval and air assets of the armed forces and in decisively standing up to Beijing sent a message that China cannot treat its so called "China Sea" as its own lake . China will have to think twice. Another ...

St Theresa's College in Cebu (STC)  defended its decision to bar five of its girls to attend their graduation for donning swim wear that "amply showed" too much of their bodies. STC is a Catholic school and as such has the right to set standards of modesty for their students. Even the secular University of the Philippines still can set a standard for modesty and no Board of Regents (BOR) over the last 104 years has rescinded this right. This might be surprising for today's students of the national university but UP in the 1920s did have standards of modesty and the State University had a Dean of Men and a Dean of Women to make sure these standards were observed. Then as now UP had a lack of proper dormitories and most students boarded in flophouses in Ermita and Intramuros where they were exposed to vice. A few "dormed" in facilities run by churches. My grandmother who was a nursing student during that time boarded in a dorm run by Protestants. (At least we...

A metal is mined from the ground. For example  Iron was mined and it gave rise to the Iron age when people used iron for making tools rather than bronze. But before that copper was mined first and relatively soft copper allowed people to master metallurgy. It's alloy with tin, bronze was harder and has more uses than copper and it brought forth the Bronze age in human history. The use of iron came much later.  Iron was softer than bronze but required more advanced "smithy" technologies. However it was in more supply and it replaced the bronze technologies in what historians call the Bronze Age collapse. Homer's "The Iliad" describes metaphorically what this collapse involved. The mining of minerals surely caused a technological revolution in the time when humans shifted from neolithic hunter gatherer and incipient agriculture to a more permanent agricultural state. And the need for mineral resources grows unabated as we come up with more technologies. ...